Page 132 - Deydier UNDERSTANDING CHINESE ARCHAIC BRONZES

Thus it seems that for the kings and nobles of the Shang 商, the elephant
was esteemed for its strength, impressive size and noble bearing and
its ivory was regarded as an especially valued commodity. In fact, it is
stated by Sarah Allan that even one of the Shang’s ancestors was called
Xiang 象 ‘Elephant’.

The elephant motif is one of the rarest and most treasured patterns in
the decorative corpus of bronze vessels of the Shang 商 dynasty. Only a
very few bronze vessels of this period decorated with an elephant motif
are recorded: a gui 簋 in the Köln (Cologne) Museum (Germany), a gu
觚 in the Idemitsu Museum (Japan), two gong 觥, one in the Royal
Ontario Museum, Toronto (Canada) and the second one in the Asian
Art Museum – Avery Brundage Collection, San Francisco (USA).

Complete three-dimensional bronze vessels in the shape of a standing
elephant, known under the name of xiangzun 象尊 (elephant zun) are
extremely rare. A famous one is now in the Freer Gallery of Washington
D.C., but the most exceptional one, of a very large size (H: 64 cm) and
from the Camondo Collection, is now in the Guimet Museum, Paris,
France.

During the early Western Zhou 西周 dynasty, some vessels were
decorated with an elephant’s head with a long trunk, all cast in the round,
but by the last half of the dynasty, the elephant all but disappeared
from the repertoire of decorative motifs employed on bronze vessels.

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